There are risks in managing climate change

Greg Picker

As part of its declared focus on ensuring common sense in policy approaches and the reduction of green tape, Queensland’s Newman government is proposing to amend environmental laws across the state.

As the law currently stands, businesses and mine operators are in breach of their requirements if they release environmental discharges (such as water from mining operations) into the environment except as approved.

In consideration of recent unforeseen weather events, such as the 2011 Queensland floods, the government proposes to effectively temporarily nullify these requirements in such cases.

This removal of conditions is supposed to be short – think hours, not months – and for exceptional circumstances.

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In the broad sense, this approach is logical. Why should companies be considered to have broken the law and subject to penalties for events that were genuinely beyond their imagination and planning?

There is, however, a fundamental caveat to this statement: what events should be considered extreme?

As the impacts of climate change are expected to make events that are rare today more common tomorrow, and to increase the severity of these events, the real question becomes what defines an event as extreme and outside reasonable planning capacities.

Engineers often talk about planning for events that happen, on average, once every 100 years. However, climate change is expected to make some of these events far more frequent.

The Australian Antarctic Division, for example, expects that storm surge events that were projected to occur only once in a hundred years in southeast Queensland in 2000 will, by 2050, be almost annual events.

Given that many public infrastructure projects and mining operations being built today have life expectancies of 40 or more years, changes in the climate by mid-century are fundamental to the Newman government’s proposed new policy.

It is unacceptable for mines and businesses to damage the environment in the event of floods or other climate-related events when they should have been foreseen and where steps to prevent the damage were available.

Accordingly, the government needs to ensure that the consideration of climate change impacts in its planning processes is made more robust.

While current requirements for environmental approvals do include consideration of a changing climate, these are only high level in their approach and do not require the development of probabilistic estimates for climate impacts, nor any sort of quantitative analysis or risk reduction options.

If business operators are given sanctions that remove their responsibility for environmental damage as a result of “unforeseen events”, then initial environmental assessments should have to include detailed analysis of projected changes in probability of different events over various timeframes.

We must ensure that future events are unforseen not because of a lack of vision, but rather because they are truly rare, even in a world with a changing climate.

Additionally, it is in the public interest that business operators undertake a comprehensive cost benefit analysis of all of the options available to reduce the risk from expected events and be required as part of their environmental approvals to implement those measures that reduce risk cost effectively.

It is not illogical for the Queensland government to develop and implement a policy that acknowledges that floods and other events can be truly unforseen. Indeed, removing penalties in these circumstances is sensible.

Concurrent with the development of this policy, however, must be enhancement of another; the Queensland government needs to ensure that as part of the environmental approvals process, more focus is put on both assessing future impacts of climate change and that cost effective steps to reduce the risk of environmental damage are identified and implemented.

Greg Picker is an associate director of sustainability and climate change at technical services consultancy, AECOM, and previously played a leading role in representing Australia at the UN climate change negotiations.

24 comments

Good Article,

Most of the environmental staff and mine planners at mines in QLD were not appointed when QLD had very wet seasons and therefor the planning was done on the usual weather patterns they had experienced during the 10 yrs of drought. When that broke they had no plans in place to cope with the dramatic flooding and 3 good rainy seasons. Discharging excess water was not a problem for 10 yrs. The non-rehabilitation of many hundreds of substancial abandoned mines in QLD is a serious problem ignored by mining companies and Governments.

Legacy issues for salinity, acid rock drainage releasing toxic metals into streams and ground water for ever are a real threat to the environment, many mines will not be able to be relinquished back to the government because they cannot stop leaking without maintainance forever. The government should not be left holding the can.Look at Mt Morgan 100's of millions of dollars will need to be spent just to stop it generating toxic water with no guarantee it will work in the end.

Commenter

VonBB

Location

Clivesland

Date and time

December 12, 2012, 2:23PM

Hey VonBB, I used to swim in the creeks at Mt Morgan. Oh sure, the water was green, and the rocks were stained a horrible yellowish orange, and god help the fool that drunk it. Problem is, no one is going to fix the water there. No money in it.

Commenter

wdawes

Date and time

December 13, 2012, 3:03PM

The biggest risk is listening to the alarmist warmies who would destroy our economy on the basis of discredited pseudoscience. All the evidence shows the planet has been cooling for the last 20 years.

Commenter

Jim

Date and time

December 12, 2012, 2:29PM

That Jim, is a barefaced lie, and please stop trolling for responses.

The accepted science shows conclusively that the planet has been warmning for the past 60 year.

Commenter

Honour

Date and time

December 12, 2012, 4:14PM

Jim, There is general consensus among scientists and scientific organisations that global warming is happening. Global average temperatures have increased steadily over the last 30 or more years. Perhaps you’re getting your information from some of those religious sites. You need to Google “global warming” and have a look at the explanations and graphs. The consequences of taking no notice will be far worse than developing policies to minimise damage to the environment. I think the risk might be that not enough people in the LNP understand this and want to do something about it.

Commenter

chrispy52

Date and time

December 12, 2012, 5:57PM

All the evidence shows that Jim is living in his own Dreamland.

Commenter

David Arthur

Location

Queensland

Date and time

December 13, 2012, 7:27AM

"The biggest risk is listening to the alarmist warmies who would destroy our economy on the basis of discredited pseudoscience. All the evidence shows the planet has been cooling for the last 20 years."

Yes Jim, that is the biggest risk. It really is. Except for the fact that none of the science has been discredited and the planet has been actually warming.

Oops. Please feel free to put your tinfoil hat back on once you've left the latrine.

Commenter

JoBlo

Location

Here

Date and time

December 13, 2012, 9:28PM

Jim, c'mon, how on earth can you say this? There has been a nearly five-fold increase in the number of weather-related events in North America since 1980. According to the largest reinsurance company in the world, there is a clear indication that the number of natural disasters has increased from an average of around 400 events globally per year during the 1980s, to a level of around 1,000 events per year in recent years. Correlate this with a chart showing human-caused CO2 emissions and then please do come back to us all and explain what you thinking is.

Commenter

Cynical Observer

Location

Sydney

Date and time

December 14, 2012, 2:37PM

In the matter of mine pollution and Newman's Hillbilly intent, perhaps you would be kind enough to explain the following: A grazier friend with a property bordering the Fitzroy River in the Gogango region, part of one of the biggest fresh water catchment deltas in the country, owns and operates a license to pump feedstock water from the river. He also uses a couple of on property rain supplied dams. His cattle, none of whom are known to hold an academic qualification in any field, instantly recognize and ignore contaminated river water in favour of the dam product.

The only time the cattle will reluctantly drink river water is when the dams are dry.